The Linux Foundation collaborated with AT&T and Tech Mahindra for Acumos AI project

The linux foundation announced a very interesting project this week to develop a platform to create an industry standard for making AI apps reusable and easily accessible to developers.

Today, AI tools are very complicated and available mainly for data scientists. The new platform will be user centric and it will focus on creating apps and microservices.

The new project named as Acumos Project that focuses on making the AI available and reusable for developers by providing a common framework and platform for the free exchange of machine learning solutions and expected to launch in year 2018.

The founding organizations include AT&T and Tech Mahindra, a company specializing in digital transformation, consulting and business reengineering. Others are invited to participate as members in the coming weeks as the Acumos Project establishes its governance model.

“Artificial intelligence is a critical tool for growing our business. However, the current state of today’s AI environment is fractured, which creates a significant barrier to adoption,” said Mazin Gilbert, Vice President of Advanced Technology at AT&T Labs, in today’s announcement. “Acumos will expedite innovation and deployment of AI applications, and make them available to everyone.”

“An open and connected AI platform will promote collaboration as developers and companies look to define the future of AI,” said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director at The Linux Foundation. “Because the platform is open source, it will be accessible to anyone with an interest in AI and machine learning, and customizable to meet specific needs. We expect interest from organizations doing work with autonomous vehicles, drones, content curation and analytics, and much more.”

“Our focus with this project is to apply AI/ML to solve real-world, practical problems at enterprises big and small,” said Raman Abrol, SVP & Business Unit Head of Americas, Comms, Media & Entertainment at Tech Mahindra. “In the past few years we have successfully brought automation to help customers run better, change faster and grow greater. With Acumos, we seek to build on that experience and together with the open source community accelerate AI/ML-related benefits to realize benefits for our customers and partners. In The Linux Foundation, we have an able partner to increase the adoption of Acumos across the community to help enrich the platform. This platform jointly developed with AT&T is a testimony to our continued commitment to the open source community.”